


A Fate Worse Than Death: Torture in the Warcraft Universe

by Kangoo



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Essays, Gen, Graphic description of torture, Mention of Suicide/Suicide Attempt, Meta, Nonfiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Self-Harm, Sensory Deprivation, Solitary Confinement, Throwing all the trigger warnings possible, just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13524816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: But only regarding Illidan, because I'm not trying to get my master's degree with thisAn incredibly unacademic essay on torture, Illidan's imprisonment, and the consequences of both.





	A Fate Worse Than Death: Torture in the Warcraft Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Судьба, что хуже смерти: пытки во вселенной Варкрафта](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15339054) by [Feloriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feloriel/pseuds/Feloriel)



> I spent WAY too long on this yo
> 
> This is not an academic paper. The plan is shoddy at best, there's not half as much research put into it as there could be, and frankly it's only the beginning of me ranting about canon
> 
> Have fun I guess, see the end notes for the sources

I have many issues with Warcraft lore. I love it, sure, I’d die for Warcraft, but it makes no sense, it gets retconned so hard so often I still don’t know what is and isn’t canon, and I really need a crashcourse in History of Azeroth 101.

But if there’s one thing I feel like I have a reasonable grasp on, it’s Illidan’s story, because I have obsessed over this dude for fucking forever alright. And so my main issue with the lore is this:

How the fuck, _why_ the fuck, did anyone ever think it was a good idea to imprison him for _ten thousand years_. Dead for ten thousand years and then brought back? There are issues, but it’s basically a regular Wednesday in Azeroth. Magical coma? Same thing. But prison? 

Short tangent: in Dishonored, another game I tend to obsess over, you are given a choice: kill your mark, or dispose of them in a way that is both non-lethal and a thousand times crueler than death. Burn the face off a clergyman with the brand of a heretic and doom him to the plague; send a noblewoman to a life with a psychopathic stalker who obsess over her; cut off the tongue of two brothers and send them to work in their own mines.

Now, think about Malfurion, who would never kill his brother. Think about what he did. Was it really any better? Was it really worth it, to keep alive a brother he promptly forgot about until the man came back to save the world and die once and for all?

So, because I am a  _big nerd_ and also procrastinating on my school work, here’s a small essay-ish on Illidan’s fate — what is was, what it should have been.

Fair warning: there is nothing resembling a coherent plan to this pseudo-essay. I’m all making it up as I go along.

**Canon: what we're starting with, and what it means**

In canon, Illidan is locked in a cell underneath Mount Hyjal from the War of the Ancients to the days of the Scourge, more or less ten thousand years. This, of course, happens weeks, if not _days_ after he was shown the sight of _the entire universe going up in flames in the Legion's wakes_. This isn't like watching a frightening film; it was a vision, with the kind of magic that made him believe — rightfully so — that they could not, in any way, let their world suffer a similar fate. It must have shaken him to his core, if only because the sight of everything known and unknown disappearing in a great explosion of doom and titanic rage is the kind of nightmare that _sticks_ with you.

And that's without talking about the traumatic injuries he suffered, to top the traumatic experiences: he had his eyes simply  _burned right out of their sockets_ and replaced with actual felfire. Fel which, I remind you, is known for its corrupting qualities, as it tends to turn creatures into monsters the like of which Lovecraft couldn't even dream of. 

Here are two things we know about those new eyes of his: their shine right through his blindfold, and their sight cannot be stopped by such things as mere darkness.

“The ancient darkness surrounding him did not stop him from seeing any more than his lack of eyes did. He had been a sorcerer once, a very great one. His spectral sight revealed every inch of his cell with far more clarity than eyes of flesh ever could.”[1]

It wouldn't be such a wild assumption to think those eyes of his might see through his blindfold… and  through  his eyelids. So we can assume Illidan  _cannot_ close his eyes, and to top it off they might also be quite painful, considering what we said about Fel just above.

Sucks to be him, right?

So, Illidan is gravely wounded and comes worryingly close to insanity because of his Sargeras-induced vision/hallucination. His brother and best friend hardly want to talk to him on any given day, let alone days after apparently betraying them for the Legion or whatever they thought he did, and anyway Illidan has been shown to be extremely proud; it's highly unlikely the man went looking for the help and support he very obviously need.

And while we're on the subject of these two: Tyrande and the twins are close in age, and she is apparently just starting as a priestess when the War of the Ancients kicks in. Which means the three are very young; probably in the elven equivalent of their early twenties, if not even younger. Do you know what happens when you burn the eyes off a twenty year old, show him the end of the world and then almost destroy his entire nation, without ever giving him a break or access to psychological support? In all likelihood, he breaks down. But Illidan is no ordinary twenty year old, or century year old or whatever elves consider 'early adulthood', so he holds it together, through some miracle of emotional repression.

Still, this means one thing: because, contrary to what Blizzard seems to think, people aren't made of stone, Illidan is probably one breath away from a panic attack at any time.

And then the Well of Eternity is… kind of blown to the high heavens. And if the blood elves and nightbornes’ decay after the loss of their respective well is anything to go by, this is nothing short of disastrous. Arcane users, such as sorcerers, such as Illidan, would have felt it immediately, and gotten slapped in the face with magic withdrawal not long thereafter. Which is obviously not a pleasant experience, even before one starts to fade into a zombie-like state of magical starvation. When Kael’thas comes to him for aid, Illidan tells him: “I share the pain of your addiction. Your hunger for magic. […] There is no cure.”[2]. This is not just hunger: it’s _withdrawal_.

As a quick note, here are some of the most common symptoms of withdrawal: panic attacks, tremors, difficulty concentrating, short-term memory loss, anxiety, irritability, headache, muscle pain, nausea, and disturbed sleep[3]. Withdrawal is like having the flu, but for weeks or even months, and worse _,_ because your mind  _knows_ there is a way to make everything better in the short-term. Imagine coming down with the worst flu of your life and someone telling you there is a miracle cure, but you’re not allowed to have it.

So here we are, with a traumatized, newly-blinded AND all-seeing-all-the-time,  probably incredibly sleep-deprived young adult who gets to experience some mild PTSD from seeing mutilated bodies, lovecraftian horrors and any awful combination of the two that this war could have come up with,  _as well_ as sudden, cold-turkey magic withdrawal. In real life, withdrawal is  _no_ _t_ _fun_ : in some case, it can kill you, and in every other can and  _will_ make you spend a very bad time. In universe, lack of arcane magic has turned elves into withered/wretched, mindless creatures driven only by their all-consuming hunger for magic,  which is probably worse than death in some case.

Those are  _not_ fun times for Illidan, I'll tell you.

What does a druggie (because, let's be hon e st  here, that's what magic users are) do when they are suddenly and unwillingly cut from their substance of preference? They do everything to find a new dose. Illidan, who already wasn't a pinnacle of mental stability, does not simply tilt off the edge: he is brutally kicked into the abyss of near-madness, and there is no one there to throw him a rope.

What does he do? He uses water from the Well to create a new one, probably saving a few sorcerers in the process. In his  (clearly and understandably irrational, in no way supposed to be making any kind of world-changing choice)  mind, it is the only solution and, in a way, it might be: there is no way destroying the very basis of night elven society overnight would go well. I mean, rebuilding after an inter-dimensional war against space Satan takes  an amount of time and effort only someone having lived in a war zone could truly appreciate (which means I am in no mean qualified) , but doing it without their most basic mean of work? Dark trolls became night elves because of the Well. They have built their whole empire around this well. Arcane magic is the sole reason night elves even exist, let alone are considered a civilized specie by most; its disappearance would mean absolute chaos.  It's basically like cutting an entire country from electricity, and then telling them to get back to their regular lives. It doesn't work like that.

Moving on.

Seeing this, Malfurion is… understandably appalled. They just fought a war born from the Well; another one just spells more trouble. He is right, just as Illidan was; those two boys simply cannot see things from more than one angle.

What does he decide to do? Drag Illidan from the slippery slope toward demon-worshiping he seems to be going down? Kill him before he can bring the world to its next-scheduled doom? Nothing of the sort. Malfurion is ready to stop his brother, but not in any definite way. He doesn't trust him enough to actually  _help_ him, no, that would be silly. But he also doesn't want to get rid of a possible future asset, and because of that he keeps Illidan alive.

Alive, but out of his sight.  He can't get into trouble if he's ten leagues under the surface and trapped in Gaia's broom closet, right?

I mean. Seeing it this way, it worked.

And then Illidan is broken out of his prison by Tyrande (who quite unnecessarily kill every warden on her path… but that an issue for another time), he goes all Hamlet on us with Gul'dan's skull, gets an upgrade, proceeds to save the world and then gets killed and yada yada until he's brought back again to both bolster Blizzard's sale and finally kill the Legion once and for all.

Let’s ignore the truly horrific concept of his friends getting Illidan in and out of existence like a winter coat out of its closet,  and get to the point.

Illidan, in the first page of the novel by [William King], says two interesting things. Firstly, he describes the feeling of the spellwork on his cell (supposed to make sure he cannot die, be it from thirst, starvation, or self-inflicted wounds) as “soul-crushing”. A feeling, I remind you, that he has been enduring for ten thousand years straight by then. Secondly, he says this: “They should have killed him. It would have been kinder. Instead they let him live, pretending it was a mercy”. At this point, Illidan is _quite obviously_ wishing for his own death, for an end to this torment. Not only does this says a lot about his mental state, which has only been getting worst since the events mentioned before, but it also  says a _lot_ about his 'living' (if you can call this living) conditions for the previous _ten millenniums_.

And do you know what _that means_? It means I get to talk about fun things. Like torture! And the horror of humanity! Aren’t y’all excited.

  
  


**Solitary confinement**

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH][Solitary confinement

noun

1.

The isolation of a prisoner in a separate cell as a punishment. ][1]

Oddly enough, solitary confinement seems to be rather common in the United States, so just in case: it is, in no way or form, a good or normal way to treat prisoners. You’ll see why soon.

The website [solitary watch] describe solitary confinement as following: “The practice of isolating people in closed cells for 22-24 hours a day, virtually free of human contact, for periods of time ranging from days to decades” [2] . Sounds familiar? It should, because that’s  _ exactly  _ what happened to Illidan. He was locked in an underground cell for 24h a day, 7 days a week, for ten thousand years, because the only rule in World of Warcraft is ‘go big or go home’. 

According so that very same website, solitary cells “generally measure from 6 x 9 to 8 x 10 feet”[3] which is basically the width of a regular bathroom. On the first page of the Illidan novel, Illidan notes that it takes him nine steps to cross the width of his cell[4] (a phrase similar to testimonies of suffering through such treatments: “You can’t move more than eight feet in one direction.”[5]). Nine steps are more or less equivalent to 7 meters (23 feet). It is quite larger than the real-world average for such cells, but not enough to make a difference in terms of living conditions. It is still cramped, and probably extremely claustrophobic for anyone well above 7ft and used to the wide open wilderness of the forests and the absurdly high architecture of kaldorei cities — in short, someone like lllidan.

His cell has three other major similarities with real-world solitary holding cells,  and what they lack :

\-  Decoration . Both his cell and its real-world equivalent have “solid metal doors”[ 6 ],  with no opening like a lock or a window to be aware of the outside world .  In a solitary cell, “e verything is gray concrete: the bed, the walls, the unmovable stool” [7] . It is clear when reading Illidan’s short assessment of his cell that not only is it as monotone as architecture can possibly be (a true miracle, considering it was built by night elves) but it’s also the only thing he has seen in the last ten thousand years, and as such has been slowly driven mad by it: “ H e could navigate this prison even without [his sight]. He knew every flagstone on the floor, every enchantment that bound him. He knew them by sight, by touch.”[ 8]. Imagine starring at a white wall for hours, days, weeks, the same white room, with never any change whatsoever.  _ I  _ get antsy when my room stays arranged the same way for more than a year!

\- Human contact, obviously. It’s the whole basis of solitary confinement that people sentenced to it are kept away from any kind of human contact.  In the rare occasions where there  _ is  _ human contact, it is either non-physical (“through a metal mesh, behind glass partitions, or in hand- and leg-cuffs.”[9]) or unwilling and with people the prisoner has no connection to or affection for (“the fleetingly rare social contacts are rarely chosen by the prisoners, and are are typically monotonous and inconsiderate of their needs.”[10]). Basically, the prisoners only ever come into contact with their guards, and even then, it is a rare occurrence, and an unpleasant or completely silent one at that. Obviously, Malfurion and Tyrande aren’t going to come visit the man they imprisoned themselves, and no one else remembers or cares about him. Illidan says himself he has spent entire  _ centuries _ without hearing “the voice of another living thing”[11]. This atrocious silence and isolation is only broken when his guards speak to him: “Only his jailors, the Watchers, spoke to him occasionally”[12]. He hates them, naturally, for what they are doing to him, but here’s an interesting phrase: he says that “he had  _ learned _ to hate them.”[13]. Either he resents them because he sees them as responsible for his fate (they are only following orders, yes, but with frankly  _ amazing _ zeal) or because whatever they say to him is far from kind, likely both. Having your only  relationship be with people who hate you and who you hate might  _ almost _ be worse than complete isolation. Almost.

\- Occupation/entertainment: “Within [solitary cells], people live lives of enforced idleness, denied the opportunity to work or attend prison programming, and sometimes banned from having televisions, radios, art supplies, and even reading materials in their cells.”[ 14 ] ‘Enforced idleness’ is an  _ excellent _ way to put it. Let’s think about it for a second: Illidan, in canon, has been shown to be extremely smart. He is a great sorcerer; he is so good at magic, in fact, that he manages to astral project himself to Argus, open a portal to it, and a lot of other feats of magical prowess. Illidan, it’s obvious, has  _ one hell of a mind _ . He might even be a genius; that wouldn’t surprise anyone, honestly. And the thing is, geniuses — scholars in general, and Illidan is definitely one if his willingness to pour over dusty old tomes to find the spells he needs — need to do things  _ all the time _ . Being bored is awful; being bored  _ and  _ a genius is maddening,  _ at best _ . As one teenager having been put in solitary confinement testifies, "The only thing left to do is go crazy."[1 5 ] Remember what I said about Illidan being mentally unstable at the end of the War of the Ancients for very obvious reasons? Yeah. That can’t have helped.

So Illidan is definitely, 100% in solitary confinement, big news. I mean, the point of all this is to get to the consequences of solitary, right?

Well, not only.

See, there’s that one thing about solitary confinement, and it’s that sometimes it is an end in and on itself, and sometimes it is a  _ mean _ .

**Sensory deprivation**

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH]” Sensory Deprivation

noun, Psychiatry.

1.

A process by which someone is deprived of normal external stimuli such as sight and sound for an extended period of time, especially as an experimental technique in psychology. “[ 1 ]

All sensory deprivation is solitary confinement, but solitary confinement isn’t always sensory deprivation. And sometimes, sensory deprivation isn’t so bad! Isolation tanks are apparently a pretty relaxing experience[2], and it is true that we are often overstimulated by the world around us.

But our brain depends on our senses for _everything_. Without them it is lost, unable to function properly, and soon enough it will start to malfunction. And I’m sure I don’t have to spell for you why it is _not good_ to have a malfunctioning brain.

Here’s the thing: long-term sensory deprivation falls under the UN’s definition of torture. That’s it. That’s the thing. Sensory deprivation is torture. The UN officially said so: “Complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason”[3]

And, you see, I’m _pretty fucking sure_ ‘darkness and absolute isolation’ can be considered sensory deprivation.

The best known form of sensory deprivation as a form of torture is what we call white torture. Amir Abbas Fakhravar, who Amnesty International reported as having suffered this torture in Iran, described it as such: "his cells had no windows, and the walls and his clothes were white. His meals consisted of white rice on white plates. To use the toilet, he had to put a white piece of paper under the door. He was forbidden to speak, and the guards reportedly wore shoes that muffled sound"[4].

Everything is whiter than a reunion of the KKK, with no windows to the outside world, which means there are no visual stimuli; I remember reading that the neon lights are also disposed in a way that creates as few shadows as possible, but I don’t have the source for that. I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten unseasoned white rice, but it tastes exactly like _nothing_. If -10 was ‘the worse thing you’ve ever eaten’ and 10 ‘the absolute best thing’, unseasoned white rice would be the perfect 0 on a scale of taste. That’s another two senses (taste and smell, if that wasn’t clear enough) that are ignored, and imagine how miserable _you_ would be if the only thing you could eat were basically mushy water. The inability to talk to guards or even hear them is two miseries for the price of one: social isolation and the loss of your hearing! Worse, the fact that they wear shoes who _muffle_ sounds mean that a prisoner would probably be able to slightly hear them, just enough to feel like they’re hearing something without being able to know what or even be sure they aren’t hallucinating it.

Because a prisoner in this situation will be doing a _lot_ of hallucinating. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

W hite torture isn’t the only way there is to make sensory deprivation into an horrific form of torture. I’ve heard Guantanamo is fond of the whole ‘glove, ear muff and masks’ tactic, Professor Donald O. Hebb, in the 50s, had the same idea and ran away with it (for SCIENCE! And also the Cold War), going so far as too put test subjects in a pitch-black room for 48h.  But all means of prolonged sensory deprivation have the same results; although Hobb’s experiences are a special case (and, as such, will not be used when talking about what  _ torture _ does to someone, for obvious reasons), as his test subjects were all willing, paid, and able to leave when they asked for it. Which they did. A lot quicker than expected: “ the majority  [of Hobb’s subjects] lasted no more than a few days in isolation—and none more than a week.” [ 5 ] Because sensory deprivation sucks.

Wanna know why? Here we go.

Remember solitary confinement? It can lead to hallucinations; we’ll get to that in a bit. Well, those two treatments are really close, because solitary confinement is always present in sensory deprivation and the other way around is way too common. Also both of them are used by the USA because the American prison system was conceptualized by psychopaths on drugs.

(I’m sorry, Americans, but there is just too much torture in your prison system for a developed country. ‘Land of the free’, remember?)

Except here, everything is made to deprive you of your senses. It’s not an unfortunate consequence of being forgotten in what amount to a fully-furnished broom closet: they _want_ you to lose your mind, and they are _very good_ at it. So your senses aren’t stimulated enough and your brain go crazy.

When you’re too bored, your brain lacks stimuli and you start daydreaming. Well, when you’re in such a situation, your senses lack stimuli and your _brain_ lacks stimuli and you start hallucinating.[6][7]

In other words, your brain doesn’t get any stimulus so it makes its own. The walls will feel like they are closing in; your head will feel like it’s going to explode; you’ll see things, hear things, _feel_ things.

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH] One volunteer repeatedly heard a music box playing; another heard a full choir accompanying his vision of the sun rising over a church. “One had a feeling of being hit in the arm by pellets fired from a miniature rocket ship he saw; another reaching out to touch a doorknob in his vision felt an electric shock,” Heron wrote.[8]

Adam Bloom, who went through 48h hours in a pitch-black room as part of an experiment, reported seeing, around the 40 hours mark, a pile 500 oyster shells, and felt as if the room was taking off under his feet[9].

People subject of sensory deprivation will also see their mental capacities impaired for the duration of their experience. They’ll struggle to do things as easy as associating words together and will have a harder time understanding new information, remembering things and resisting to suggestions[10][11].

Adam Bloom’s experience is especially interesting to read for three reasons: it was a voluntary experiment, he took care to document it in good details, and it’s as close to Illidan’s own imprisonment as we’ll ever go without finding the secret of immortality and using that knowledge to lock someone up for ten thousand years in a magical cell under Mt Everest. Let’s talk about what he lived for a second.

Bloom is a comedian who was curious about sensory deprivation. He says himself that, as a comedian, his mind is always going a mile a minute, and he thought it would be nice to be in perfect, absolute quiet for two whole days.

What he did not expect was how harrowing two small days in perfect darkness could be. Barely an hour in, he started to feel anxious about little things, like his family never knowing about his fate if he were to die there (something that couldn’t happen, as this experiment was closely monitored). In less than a day, this feeling of anxiety turned to full-blown paranoia. He thought that this whole experiment was fake and he had been abandoned here; and although he knew, rationally, that this was in no way true, the feeling remained.

Then, he lost track of time: “I dozed on and off for what I thought was a few hours, but when I woke up I had no idea whether it was day or night. […] Even eating the meals I was handed didn't help me reset my body clock. I felt horrendously bored, and completely out of touch with everything." [12]. This spatial and temporal disorientation led to odd emotional reactions, like singing and then bursting into tears for no reason. Bloom notes: “my emotions were beginning to run out of control”[13].

Then, as we previously said, he started to have a hard time thinking, or even staying alert. With nothing to do, his brain “felt as though it was going to sleep”[14]. This leads to a behavior common to prisoners kept in confinement and caged animals: Bloom began to pace the length of his cell to keep himself awake, as the lack of any other kind of stimulation made it nigh impossible.

Bloom recalls reaching his worst point after 40 hours, which, I remind you, is when he started to hallucinate. “I felt nothing but numbness, as though I was losing the will to live.”[15]. Even then, he wanted to call it off, as this situation felt unbearable; and only the thought that some people suffer through sensory deprivation for weeks, months or even years made him go through the whole 48 hours.

This if a feeling that was shared by Hebb’s subject, who were also volunteers. Despite his estimation that he would be able to study their behavior for a few weeks, Hebb soon discovered that this would not be the case: “the majority [of the subjects] lasted no more than a few days in isolation—and none more than a week.”[16]

We are talking here of a voluntary experiment that robs you of your ability to think clearly in a few hours and becomes so soul-crushing that no one would willingly stay in those conditions more than a _week_. This is why forcing people through this treatment is a mean of torture; now imagine what it would do to someone, to suffer through it not for a few days, or a few months, or even a few years, but a few _decades_? A few _millenniums_?

I’ve been told, more than once, that elves are immortal and, as such, more resilient than us. To which I reply: bullshit.

If there’s one thing torture is good at, it’s causing pain. To anyone. And no one, no matter how fantastical or immortal, can go through ten thousand years of torture and come out unscathed.

So let’s see how worse for wear this person is once they get out, instead.

  
  


**The consequences**

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH]“Human beings are social creatures. Without the benefit of another person to "bounce off of," the mind decays; without anything to do, the brain atrophies; and without the ability to see off in the distance, vision fades. Isolation and loss of control breeds anger, anxiety, and hopelessness.”[1]

In Blizzard’s defense, we _might_ be able to bypass some of the physical consequences. Illidan no longer has eyes to lose, and I highly doubt spectral vision is held to the same needs as the fragile assemblage of muscles and flesh of our own human eyes. Muscle atrophy might not be much of an issue as well; the spells on his cell were here to keep him in the same situation as when he was first locked in it, and as such Illidan is exactly the same physically when getting out as he was when getting in. He might have trouble running around while his body gets used to not being supported by magic anymore, but it is also likely he spent most of those millenniums doing push-ups on his cell to pass the time. I mean, you don’t get _those_ arms just by waving fire spells around, and his weapons are probably as heavy as a medium-sized teenager, so Illidan is definitely not averse to exercise.

But we definitely  can’t ignore the psychological effect of ten thousand years of isolation  and sensory deprivation . It’s the main reason I’m writing this, after all; what’s the point, if I go at it Blizzard-style and hand wave them away?

(I love you Blizzard but dear  _god_ )

Let’s begin with the obvious:  “solitary confinement beyond 15 days leads directly to severe and irreversible psychological harm.” [ 2 ], sometimes less. Illidan, with his whopping  _ten thousand years_ ,  has literally no chance of escaping those nasty after-effects. 

W hich include, among other things: “[…]  hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hallucinations, panic attacks, cognitive deficits, obsessive thinking, paranoia,  […]  high rates of anxiety, nervousness, obsessive ruminations, anger, violent fantasies, nightmares, trouble sleeping, as well as dizziness, perspiring hands, and heart palpitations.” [ 3 ]. Other symptoms include emotional numbness, a fear of impending death, poor impulse control, social withdrawal, and violence toward others and oneself[ 4 ].

Now, it’s not hard to see how Illidan could be suffering from those in canon,  when you compare the way he acts to this nice laundry list of despair.

Apart from his fanatic hatred of the Legion, Illidan has— very few emotions to speak of. Sadness, at thinking Tyrande could be dead; smug humor, when around Velen;  victorious cheer , briefly, when crowning himself lord of Outland. He is sympathetic to the plight of the blood elves, but not  enthusiastically so, and isn’t even  _ that _ angry at Maiev, or anyone, really. He’s a dick to her, sure, with reasons, but he’s never emotional about it. Although he seems, at first, like he simply has an excellent grasp on his emotions, it is just as likely that Illidan doesn’t  _ have _ the emotions to keep contained.

T hat doesn’t mean Illidan can’t be an intense guy, because he definitely is, when the Legion is concerned. But  _ only _ when the Legion is concerned. Kael’thas, his second-in-command and most likely the closest thing to a friend he has in Outland, betray him for the Legion after six years of loyal service?  _ Alright then _ . Akama betrays him?  _ Meh. _ Vashj, his friend for too many years to count, dies?  _ Ok _ . Even  _ death _ seems to be mostly an unpleasant setback more than anything,  and he approaches the whole event with faint sadness and disappointment, nowhere near the usual reaction for an actual person, let alone someone in the Warcraft universe, where everyone is Extra™.

T his emotional numbness is only broken by short outbursts of rage, usually toward the Legion or, sometimes, the Naaru[ 5 ].  Oh, sure, when an immortal entity of Light tries to forcefully change his very being, he flips out,  _ fortunately _ , otherwise he’d basically be emotionally dead.  And then Turalyon tries to behead him and he just goes back to his regularly scheduled  _ absolute lack of fucks to give _ .  Some may think Illidan is just very chill, but that’s not being  _ chill _ . That’s disregarding your own survival. Illidan doesn’t want to die until this fight is done ( _ after _ is another matter entirely, you’ll soon see), but he doesn’t make that much effort into actually keeping himself alive.

( Are we playing bingo? I’m definitely playing bingo. You can check ‘mood swings’ as well, although I suspect we would all go from 0 to 100 in a second if a being of pure light were to try to do whatever Xe’ra tried to do to him. But  _ he _ goes from 0 to 100 to 0 again in a handful of minutes, and I’d almost wish I could calm myself as fast as he does, except his technique includes a lot of trauma.)

Oh wait, no! There’s another thing that makes Illidan wakes up from his usual cloud of anxiety-driven, exhausted disappointment with himself: memories of his own imprisonment. “ The spells restraining the pit lord reminded Illidan of his own imprisonment, and of those who had held him. Rage bubbled up within him.”[ 6 ]. He is, with excellent reasons, extremely angry about his fate; and even then he doesn’t show it. He faces Maghteridon in this scene with absolute external calm, perfectly in control of his emotions.

Illidan either feels nothing or everything (mostly rage, but still) at once, and balances the two with a truly staggering amount of emotional suppression. We’ll talk about that later.

Again, I mention the Legion as an exception, for good reasons. Illidan is very calm, even downright apathetic,  until anyone mentions demons, at which point you can only hope to not be caught in the way of his rampage. 

“Obsessive thinking, often of violent and vengeful character” is basically all that drives him: his only reason to live is his will to utterly destroy the Legion in retribution for what they did before and during the War of the Ancients, as well as preemptively for what they will undoubtedly do _after._ Once that is done, he is ready to die, choosing to stay on Antorus despite the fact that he obviously has no chance against Sargeras alone, and the Mad Titan doesn’t need a mortal jailer. There isn’t a ‘lack of care for one’s continued survival’ box on our misery bingo, but there _is_ a ‘suicide attempt’ one, and this definitely applies, so check away.

I f Illidan fears his own impending death, it is because it would leave him with unfinished business of epic proportion, and gives the Legion a great opportunity to fall on the now-defenseless Azeroth and burn it to the ground. Once he has more demon hunters under his command, assuring that at least one might survive to keep fighting, this fear abates. 

Here’s how it goes. Illidan, despite everything, is a smart guy. He knows he has no chance against the joined forces of the Horde and the Alliance. He probably suspects that Maiev will stab him at some point in the near future, and that Akama intends on betraying him, although he might not yet be aware that Akama is betraying him at that exact moment and that Maiev intends to stab him in the next hour, he definitely knows this is not a day he is going to survive.

Or maybe he doesn’t expect to actually die; but I like to think he wishes it, because the  alternative is another eternity of prison and if there’s one thing this essay is about, it’s how much Illidan doesn’t want to do that again.

Illidan doesn’t want to die; no one does, I know, but he just has better things to do than die. Is he afraid of it? No. But is he afraid of what would happen if he did?  _ Yes _ . This is why, when you fight him, he tries his best to obliterate you. The Legion and an impending threat to his ability to fight it are the two things still able to coerce actual feelings out of him for more than a second. In those case s, he will fight and rage and gloat like any raid boss out there; any other situation and he just seems like he’s too tired to  _ care _ .

Do you ever reach that point of exhaustion when your mind is on autopilot, like you fall to your most basic programming of ‘more or less logical response to exterior output’ and ‘doing your job to the best of your present capacities’? That’s Illidan, except his basic programming is ‘sarcasm’ and his job is to approach demons with extreme prejudice.

( Illidan either feels nothing or everything (mostly rage, but still) at once.  We’ll get to the ‘why’ later in this. )

Now, moving on to the next part of this step-by-step guide to insanity, which is  _ social withdrawal.  _ Withdrawal has two definitions: it is either a lack in something (drugs, whatever) or a retreat  _ from _ something. The later is the one we are talking about now.

Social withdrawal, or social isolation,  is exactly what is says on the tin. 

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH]  Are you spending increasingly more time alone because you think no one understands what you’ve experienced or what you’re going through? Are you avoiding social situations because you might be reminded of things you hope to forget? Do you avoid others because you feel you should be able to deal with challenges on your own? These can be signs of social withdrawal or social isolation. [ 7 ]

D espite being surrounded by people at all time in the Black Temple, Illidan is… very lonely. In the novel, he is often seen meditating or working alone, going off into the wild and/or dangerous situations alone, planning alone…He is, quite simply, isolating himself. I mean, even if he doesn’t trust his troops, or most of his allies (he shouldn’t, c.f: Akama), he  _ has _ two trustworthy acquaintances, if not friends (which they are, fuck you Blizzard) in Kael’thas and Vashj. There is no reason for him to be so alone unless he wants to be.

Make no mistake here: this is a voluntary choice, although maybe an unconscious one as well, if that makes sense. But this leads to “a lack of meaningful, extended relationships, and especially close intimacy”[ 8 ],  a crucial part of our life as social animals (see: the whole reason we’re talking about all those consequences)  as well as, ultimately, to his death.

Because Illidan isolates himself from everyone who could help him, he alienates them as well. He doesn’t seek his allies’ help when planning or casting dangerous spells, keeps even his demon hunters at arm’s length, and in doing that he loses their trust (except in the demon hunters’ case, because they are 100% ride-or-die for Illidan. As in ‘ride with him or die for him’, because treachery just isn’t in their vocabulary).

(This is not canon, because nothing concerning Kael’thas’s motives is, but I suspect Kael’thas packed up and left to join the Legion because Illidan promised to help his people and then basically disappears in his own stronghold, only to be seen again when he darts in and out of portals to distant planets. Kael’thas is a leader in his own right and has to think of his people first and also, magical addiction and stuff. This is not the point of this subject, although I do love to talk about Kael’thas.)

Akama might have been patient if he had been told “you’ll get your sacred ground back once we’ve destroyed those responsible for your current situation”. No one there likes the Legion! No one! It costs exactly nothing to communicate with people to tell them a little about your plans! Anything would have sufficed. But Illidan managed to keep his allies as far as physically possible while still being on the same plane of existence, and kept them in secrecy for almost the entirety of his ‘reign’.

Let’s linger on Akama for a moment. He leads the Broken, those draenei corrupted by Outland, and suffered Maghteridon’s  reign for a long, long time. All he wants is to see the Black Temple, the draenei’s ancient, sacred place, free of demons, and if the whole universe could follow suit it would be nice too. He hates the Legion. If Illidan had asked to use the Black Temple as the base for his Legion-destroying efforts, Akama would probably have agreed. Hell, if Illidan had told him “I am working on soldiers basically genetically engineered to kill demons and on opening a rift to one of the Legion’s world in the hope of dealing a crippling blow to their number”, Akama would definitely have rescheduled his betrayal to a later date. But Illidan had to keep his mouth shut for  _ no reason at all  _ (even paranoid leaders share some modicum of information with their inner circle and other people tasked with helping them lead stuff alright) and Akama decided to stab him in the back, all because he has the communicative capacity of the protagonist of a bad rom-com.

T his might fall under the ‘confused thought process’ thing as well, though, because Illidan is  _ smarter than that _ . He has fought a war before, and now he forgets how to plan things ahead? Because Illidan does act recklessly, telling no one of his plans and feeding demon bits to desperate people and throwing himself at demons in the hope of reaching his goal before they destroy him. He gets paranoid, never reaching to the Alliance and/or the Horde to tell them of his plans or recruit them in his war effort. Because, yes, the Alliance is made of a bunch of racist assholes, but night elves have seen the Legion. Hell, most of them have, at that point, considering you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a pack of demons nowadays. They all have a pretty good idea of the danger it represents. As for the Horde — it’s made of orcs and Forsaken! Trust me, they  _ know _ . The orcs would sell their soul in a moment to get a shot at the Legion in revenge for what it did to them and made them do! 

Illidan spent half the War of the Ancients making connections to dangerous, volatile people in the hope of winning the war. He’s always been a cunning, double-playing bastard, and it’s only a testament to the effect his imprisonment had on him that he no longer thinks to make alliances with everything that breathes (or don’t) and isn’t his direct enemy.

Alright, I’m pretty sure this amount to _at least_ one misery bingo,  so we are getting back to that whole ‘why the emotional pendulum swing’ thing, at last! But before we can get to the good part, it’s time for _more definitions._ Aren’t y’all excited.

D o  bear in mind that I am in no way a professional in psychology and I don’t know everything. Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.

Suppression is “the conscious intentional exclusion from consciousness of a thought or feeling”[ 9 ]. It is, in other words, the act of voluntarily putting something out of your mind and refusing to act upon it, be it an emotion, a thought or a memory.  Do not confuse it with repression, which is “a mental process by which distressing thoughts, memories, or impulses that may give rise to anxiety are excluded from consciousness and left to operate in the unconscious”[ 10 ]. It is an entirely unconscious process; you may remember seeing it in some shows when someone realizes they have been repressing the memory of some traumatic event.  There is little to no sign of the repressed memory beforehand; it’s like losing a file from your computer, and having to use a software to find it in the dark depth of technology.

Repression is… kind of unhealthy, more often than not. It’s not forgetting, not really; it’s a security measure from your brain which, in trying to protect itself, is doing what it does best and ruining everything.

(“This is fine”, your brain says, sitting on a trapdoor toward _infinite trauma._ )

Suppression, on the other hand, is somewhat of a normal occurrence. If you are a decent human being, you probably suppress a lot of things on an everyday basis (and even more if you are on the more reserved side of the emotional spectrum): your desire to strangle a rude dickhead, the urge to scream in anger at someone or to cry uncontrollably in the middle of a crowded office.  Society is still standing because we learned some kind of expressive suppression, and aren’t flying off the bat at the slightest feeling.

But some people (extremely shy people, traumatized people...) sometimes take that whole suppression thing to a whole new, unhealthy level. They might do it because they seek to “control their actions” or to “maintain a positive social image”[ 11 ]  or m aybe they have had bad experiences with emotional outbursts of any kind.  No matter the reason, the consequence will be the same.

Because suppression is more than refusing to show all of your emotions outwardly. It involves both the reduction of facial expression and other ways to show emotions, but also a voluntary, conscious control of the way you feel positive and negative emotions[ 12 ]. No only do you chose to not show them, you also try your best to not  _ feel _ them, or at least minimize them. 

See, here’s the thing with emotions: you actually  _ do  _ need to express them at some point. It’s necessary for your mental health and emotional stability. The more you suppress them now and the worse it will be when they slip through later.

Hence that whole ‘either ready to kill or in a mild coma’ thing. The question now would be: why the suppression?

I’m trying to not speculate too much, although I _am_ using the canon in ways it was never supposed to be used, so I’ll keep the headcanons to a bare minimum of one (1), as an hypothesis: Illidan is suppressing the hell out of his emotions because he’s scared.

You would be, too, if the last time you showed emotion you got locked up in a prison.

That’s right, that’s my headcanon. That’s the hypothesis here. Illidan is afraid of showing his emotions in plain sight because he’s scared that doing so would risk his freedom again. It’s not hard to see how he could have such a mindset; he is, after all, a bit of a control freak, and likes to have everything under control, even his emotions, because everything can be used against him. In the past, it _has_ , and often at that: the universe has the unfortunate habit of kicking him in the balls each time he expresses vulnerability.

There’s the whole War of the Ancients disaster, getting betrayed by all those whom he trusted (looking at you Kael’thas)… Remember when we delivered his messages to his brother and Tyrande, where he expresses his genuine feelings and shows that he trusts and loves them and they brush it off? Yeah.

So here you go. A small thing to think about.

Finally, I did say I would come back to sensory deprivation, didn’t I?

[QUOTE PARAGRAPH]“this torture  **leads quickly to hallucinations**  and has long-term adverse effects. The prisoners can be kept in this state for months or even years, and once outside the room the psychological consequences will be permanent “[13]

That is true for most, if not all, means of tortures. PTSD is one hell of a psychological consequence — it’s like a Mental Disorder Without Border, everyone can get it from a wide variety of traumatic experiences! Isn’t that great?

(no it’s not)

But sensory deprivation isn’t only a sure way to get yourself some good old PTSD: it also leads to the same consequences as solitary confinement (once again because the two often go hand in hand), and then some. Because things can _always_ get worse when we’re talking about torture.

Sensory deprivation as a mean of torture is meant to _unmake_ you, to make you “lose personal identity through long periods of isolation”[14], and it is _very good_ at it.

Ebrahim Nabavi, who was imprisoned by the Iranian government for a while, claimed that he could no longer sleep without sleeping pills[15]. But what truly hits me is the following sentence: “The loneliness never leaves you, long after you are “free.””[16].

Imagine being trapped in your own head for so long, surrounded by nothing but white walls, that even after you are ‘saved’ you are never truly _out_. This torture pushes, and it keeps pushing, and either you break or you retreat to the farthest corner of your mind, where it cannot reach you and you cannot reach out. And often, it’s both, because it’s not true torture if people aren’t trying their best to get information out of you, isn’t it? People who throw you into an empty room for years aren’t the kind of people who are uncomfortable with lies and manipulation. And so they leave you alone, with insanity slowly creeping in, and the only sounds you’re allowed to hear are lies and insults, and then: “you begin to break. And once you break, they have control. And then you begin to confess."[17]

“But what does it have to do with Illidan?” you ask, and I say: _everything_.

Because Illidan was locked in darkness for ten thousand years with for sole company an order of soldiers whose only purpose was to keep him there, and Maiev is known for being ready to got to absurd length to take revenge on him, and also for being quite the psychopath herself. We’ll got back to that later (add it to the list, why won’t you), but I’m sure you understand how bad such an arrangement would be. Don’t tell me Maiev wouldn’t go as far as to taunt Illidan and make him believe (or just plain tell him, at that point) that Malfurion and Tyrande had forgotten about him, because she _absolutely would_.

But that’s only speculations, right? Well speculations are where I get to have fun, but I’m not going to make you suffer through a lot of ‘em. That’s not the point of this thing.

So here we are, with a Illidan that went through hell and, oddly enough, got out without major PTSD or having panic attacks. How considerate of him to be battle ready after what amount to a ten thousand years-long meltdown/coma comba. Blizzard could have owned up to their bullshit timeline (I swear I love Blizzard more than my own life I just have issues with That One Thing™) and gone the distance with Illidan’s trauma but they didn’t and I _mostly_ accept that. Now it’s your job to be outraged about it.

  
  


**Conclusion: what we’re left at**

It soon becomes obvious, when thinking about it (with more serious than it probably deserves) that what Illidan went through was, purely and simply, torture. And that might be a consequence of Blizzard’s inherently American outlook on things, or simply their usual disregard for anything that doesn’t abide to their ‘rule of cool’ (which is the best way to do things); we’ll probably never know. But, whatever the cause, this raises more question than it answers.

What does it say about kaldorei society at large, and Malfurion and Tyrande in particular, that they would cast Illidan (a brother, a friend, a golden-eyed figure of fate) in shadows until, they had hoped, the end of times? Was there no one to oppose this sentence, no friend to back him up, or did they simply never know the truth about his fate? If the night elves’ limit then wasn’t at unspeakable torture and unethical magical experiments, _where_ was it? Where is it _now_?

What would Illidan have been like, if he had been written more like a victim and survivor of torture? How much did this trauma affect his way of thinking, of acting, and how much of his questionable decisions and downfall can be attributed to the way his mind was forever twisted by his experience?

How does it feel to stumble back into a world that has forgotten you, where even you have forgotten yourself? Many things can change in ten thousand years, even more so in a world such as Azeroth; how did Illidan manage to adapt, how did he react to the innumerable changes? What does it say of him and his intellect that he either became fluent in a few languages (Thalassian, Draenei, maybe even Orcish and Darnassian, if the later even changed at all) or learned to work his way around the lack? What more damage did it do to his mind, to be so out of his depth?

(Who wanna bet Illidan allied himself with nagas, satyrs and blood elves because they’re the only ones who spoke a language he could kind of understand?)

I won’t try to answer these questions right now. Firstly because that’s not the point here, and more importantly because I do, actually, have better things to do than write a doctorate thesis on Illidan, and this is already almost ten thousand words long.

So here is how I will conclude: torture can never be justified. There is nothing, no opinion, no argument that can justify the voluntary and systematic torture of someone, innocent or guilty. It’s an insult to us as a society, to our laws, to our justice system, to our very sense of morals, of right and wrong. There is nothing remotely just or fair or understandable about torture. It is a crime in the same way murder and rape are, because its only goal is to harm someone to the point of breaking. A society which condones torture is no better than one which conquers new land through massacres. Both are tainted with blood shed in vain, and neither deserve the glory they receive.

What Illidan went through is, simply and plainly, torture. There is no way around it. He might have deserved it; I could write another ten thousand words on why he didn’t, but even if he _did_ , that is no reason to let him suffer in darkness for longer than he’s been alive and free beforehand. It is cruel, and unnecessary, and even more pointless that the punishment isn’t supposed to drag any kind of confession out of him. It simply is pain for the sake of it; torture for the sake of torture.

You could consider this a basis for further writing on the subject — because I will, most likely, come back to it.

Or you could take it as a plea for Illidan, who lost everything in his fight against the Legion; Illidan, who has died once and then, when called back to the fight, never hesitated to sacrifice what little he had left; Illidan who did everything in his power to be worthy of the love of respect of the only family he ever had, and only received scorn. Not forgiveness, not even hate; just the flippant disinterest of people who abandoned him long ago.

And if you do, remember: Illidan might have been far from perfect, but he didn’t deserve this. No one does.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Introduction**  
>  [1] Illidan, William King  
> [2] Warcraft III The Frozen Throne – Alliance Campaign  
> [3] https://americanaddictioncenters.org/withdrawal-timelines-treatments/  
>  **Solitary confinement**  
>  [1]oxforddictionaries.com  
> [2][3][5][6][7][9][14]solitarywatch.com  
> [4][8][11][12][13]Illidan novel, William King  
> [10][15] https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-solitary-confinement-is-the-worst-kind-of-psycholog-1598543595  
>  **Sensory deprivation**  
>  [1]oxforddictionaries.com  
> [2]https://medium.com/the-nib/flip-the-switch-2801d727a6d2  
> [3]United Nation Convention Against Torture: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx  
> [4]https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78852.htm  
> [5][7][8][10][16]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/donald-o-hebb-effects-extreme-isolation/  
> [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture  
> [9][11][12][13][14][15]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-509648/Losing-mind-What-happens-48-hours-pitch-black-bunker.html  
>  **The consequences**  
>  [1][2][4]https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-solitary-confinement-is-the-worst-kind-of-psycholog-1598543595  
> [3]solitarywatch.com  
> [5] World of Warcraft cinematic: Refusal of the Gift  
> [6] Illidan novel, William King  
> [7]https://maketheconnection.net/  
> [8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_isolation  
> [9][10]Merriam-Webster dictionnary  
> [11][12]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressive_suppression  
> [13]http://emadion.it/en/tortures/white-torture-the-damage-it-can-cause/ :  
> [14][15][16][17]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture:


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